Co-investigator John Sterman
Project Website http://mitsloan.mit.edu/actionlearning/labs/s-lab.php
Project Start Date February 2007
The Sustainable Business Lab (S-Lab) provides students with a unique opportunity to explore the connection between business, the environment, and society. Through their S-Lab projects, students apply knowledge from the classroom to solve real-world problems and see firsthand how businesses are tackling the massive challenges of sustainability. In the process they develop and refine decision making tools that advance the sustainability field.
Under the guidance of an MIT faculty mentor, interdisciplinary teams of four students engage in a twelve week-long project with S-Lab’s partner companies and non-profit organizations. The projects investigate a range of sustainability issues, including: aligning business strategies with social and environmental goals; developing methodologies to measure business impacts on the environment; and measuring the return on investment from environmental and social initiatives. The analyses of the S-Lab teams help partner organizations take concrete actions to improve social, environmental, and economic outcomes in the long-term. Many final project reports are made publicly available to diffuse the students’ insights, frameworks, and tools, and advance the field of sustainability broadly.